Another Take: How the Assads took Syria
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 14 December 2024
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Every Saturday, we revisit a story from the archives. This originally aired on July 8, 2020. None of the dates, titles, or other references have been changed.
Syria’s inner circle of power was dominated by the al-Assad family for more than 50 years, but over a decade of war exposed its cracks. Journalist Sam Dagher was based in Damascus in the early years of the war, and after the government kicked him out, he used his access to write the inside story of the family that’s become synonymous with Syria.
In this episode, we pull the curtain back on the inner circle to hear the story of President Bashar al-Assad who wasn’t meant for power, but was lifted up by the family name that consumed him.
In this episode:
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Sam Dagher (@samdagher), Journalist and Author of ‘Assad or We Burn the Country’
Episode credits:
This episode was updated by Sarí el-Khalili. The original production team was Alexandra Locke, Dina Kisbeh, Priyanka Tilve, Ney Alvarez, Amy Walters, Natalia Aldana, Stacey Samuel, Graelyn Brashear, and our host, Malika Bilal.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editor is Hisham Abu Salah. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
Connect with us:
@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and YouTube
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hi, it's Amy Walters, senior producer with the take, back with another take, where we bring back an episode from the past. |
| 0:20.0 | The shock of Bashar al-Assad's downfall |
| 0:23.7 | continues to reverberate in Syria and around the world. He fled to Moscow ending more than two |
| 0:31.5 | decades in power without making a statement. Back in 2020, we spoke with journalist Sam Dagger, |
| 0:39.5 | someone who knows the family better than most. |
| 0:42.3 | He spent years reporting from Syria |
| 0:45.3 | until the government banned him in 2014. |
| 0:49.6 | Here's that episode now. |
| 0:52.1 | But remember, none of the dates or other references have changed from July 8th, 2020, |
| 0:59.0 | when it originally aired. |
| 1:06.0 | Some compare this family to the Mafia, that they're kind of soprano-like. |
| 1:10.0 | They're powerful, they're rich, they're very secretive. |
| 1:15.1 | This is a story about a family, and the country many would say they've destroyed. |
| 1:20.8 | We're talking about already almost 10 years of war in Syria. |
| 1:24.7 | We're talking about an economy that has shrunk to one-third of what it was 10 years ago. |
| 1:32.3 | There are no numbers that can capture the scale of Syria's destruction. The United Nations |
| 1:38.8 | hasn't been able to count the death toll for years. While the numbers are not exact, the deaths have slowed in recent |
| 1:46.5 | months. But as Lebanese American author Sam Dagger knows, the suffering can always get worse. |
| 1:53.4 | He spent years reporting in Syria until the government kicked him out in 2014. |
| 2:00.4 | We're talking about 80% of Syrians living in poverty, 40% unemployed, rampant inflation, |
| 2:07.6 | basic goods like sugar, rice, flour, coffee, double or triple in price. |
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